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Feeling the Heat, Yoga Chain Bows to Bikram, Despite Federal Ruling

By Andy Newman December 10, 2012 12:03 pmDecember 10, 2012 12:03 pm

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A Yoga to the People class in the East Village in 2010.Credit Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times

Updated, 4:25 p.m. | A popular New York-based chain of yoga studios accused by Bikram Yoga of copyright infringement has decided to let go, despite a Copyright Office ruling that supported its position.

The chain, Yoga to the People, has agreed to stop offering its high-temperature classes that are patterned after Bikram Yoga in order to settle a federal lawsuit filed by Bikram, according to a joint press release issued by bothparties last week.

But Yoga to the People’s founder, Greg Gumucio, said on Monday that he was not getting out of the hot-yoga business: Yoga to the People is working on a new sequence that will also be offered in a super-heated room and incorporate some poses from the sequence popularized by Bikram’s founder, Bikram Choudhury, but will also include other poses.

“The idea is to create something new,” Mr. Gumucio said.

Yoga to the People has won a large following mainly through its low prices: it charges $8 a class at its six studios in New York City — compared with as much as $25 a class at Bikram studios. Yoga to the People has agreed to stop using the Bikram sequence by Feb. 15.

Bikram’s numerous suits against its imitators, including the one filed in California last December against Yoga to the People, have drawn criticism for their claims that yoga postures, which are thousands of years old, could be anyone’s property.

The current suit charged that the sequence of 26 postures and two breathing exercises, performed in a room heated to 105 degrees, formulated by Mr. Choudhury, were his intellectual property, and that Mr. Gumucio, a former student of Mr. Choudhury’s, stole it from him.

Citing a 2005 case in which Mr. Choudhury was defending his copyright, which he obtained in 2003, the copyright office wrote:

While such a functional system or process may be aesthetically appealing, it is nevertheless uncopyrightable subject matter. A film or description of such an exercise routine or simple dance routine may be copyrightable, as may a compilation of photographs of such movements. However, such a copyright will not extend to the movements themselves, either individually or in combination, but only to the expressive description, depiction, or illustration of the routine …

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Greg Gumucio, founder of Yoga to the People, standing, teaches a class in New York in 2010.Credit Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times

Nevertheless, Mr. Gumucio wrote in a letter [PDF] posted on Yoga to the People’s Web site, he decided to settle the suit by agreeing to stop offering the course patterned after Bikram.

The Copyright Office ruling, which Mr. Gumucio called “an important victory,” would still have required him to fight the matter in court, and, Mr. Gumucio wrote, “Intuitively, I no longer felt the need to be entangled in the Bikram battle.”

Mr. Gumucio, who opened his first Yoga to the People studio in 2006 in the East Village, added in his letter that after reading a book by another former Bikram disciple-turned-competitor, “Hell Bent,” by Benjamin Lorr,

forced me to consider deeply why I continue to maintain an association with Bikram the man and Bikram the yoga sequence – even if from a distance. There is so much good yoga to be explored, played with, and created! Why have a connection with someone with whom I disagree with on so many levels?

Mr. Gumucio said Monday that Yoga to the People has already begun incorporating some of the non-Bikram poses and that they will include the thunderbolt and the plank, among others.

“What Bikram is missing a little bit of is some of that upper-body stuff,” he said.

A lawyer for Mr. Choudhury, Robert Gilchrest, did not return a call to California seeking comment Monday morning.

Correction: December 10, 2012An earlier version of this post stated erroneously that the federal Copyright Office did not specifically mention Bikram yoga in its ruling that a sequence of exercises cannot be copyrighted. In fact, the the Copyright Office did cite Bikram yoga as an example of an uncopyrightable exercise sequence.

A version of this article appears in print on 12/11/2012, on page A29 of the NewYork edition with the headline: After Suit, Yoga Studio Will Alter Offering.

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